Cargill, Kennedy and Coe Launch Beef Sustainability Assessment

Cargill Cattle Feeders, the cattle supply arm of the company’s U.S. beef business, has partnered with Wichita-based consultancy Kennedy and Coe, in an effort to create a verified beef supply chain sustainability assessment program for Cargill feed yards.

The assessment will begin with a year-long focus on the economic, environmental and community impacts of Cargill’s four feed yards in Texas, Kansas and Colorado. 

Following the initial data collection, Kennedy and Coe's ResourceMax assessment service will generate a report, and a subsequent analysis and benchmarking will be established to support ongoing improvement.

Cargill beef customers also will be able to provide their own sustainability criteria, yielding a customized assessment report that gives them data to measure and document their organization’s supply chain sustainability progress.

“As global demand for animal proteins to nourish people continues to rise in concert with increasing population and consumer income levels, it is important to improve the way we use resources to produce beef,” said John Keating, president of Cargill’s North American beef business. 

Keating added that it's "critical to improve the way we manage resources, and we will develop a way to measure the effective use of inputs and outputs ranging from water and feed, to worker safety, manure management, air quality, energy use, land stewardship and animal welfare. "

“Today, people have a desire to know how the food they eat is produced and where it comes from," said Sara Harper, Kennedy and Coe’s director of sustainability and supply chain solutions.  "Cargill is pioneering transparency and collaboration with its beef customers to share information important to consumers.”

If successful, Cargill aims to expand the assessment to include cattle production in collaboration with stocker operators, ranchers, as well as with Cargill’s strategic feed yard partners.